Seattle Police Chief Diaz to step down

BY LEVI PULKKINEN, AND VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Updated 1:52 pm, Monday, April 8, 2013

Seattle Police Chief John Diaz addresses the public during a press conference where he announced his retirement on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle. Behind Diaz is Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Seattle Police Chief John Diaz addresses the public during a press...

Seattle Police Chief Chief John Diaz, rear, listens as Assistant Chief Jim Pugel and Mayor Mike McGinn address the public during a press conference on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle. Diaz announced his retirement and the McGinn appointed Pugel as interim chief.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Seattle Police Chief Chief John Diaz, rear, listens as Assistant...

Mayor Mike McGinn holds up a book as he talks about Seattle Police Chief Chief John Diaz, rear left, during a press conference where Diaz announced his retirement on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Mayor Mike McGinn holds up a book as he talks about Seattle Police...

Mayor Mike McGinn announces Assistant Chief Jim Pugel, left, as interim chief after John Diaz announced his retirement at a press conference on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Mayor Mike McGinn announces Assistant Chief Jim Pugel, left, as...

Mayor Mike McGinn speaks after Seattle Police Chief John Diaz announced his retirement on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Mayor Mike McGinn speaks after Seattle Police Chief John Diaz...

Assistant Chief Jim Pugel prepares to speak at the podium after Seattle Police Chief John Diaz announced his retirement on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle. Mayor Mike McGinn appointed Pugel as interim chief.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Assistant Chief Jim Pugel prepares to speak at the podium after...

Rich O'Neill, president of Seattle's police labor union, speaks after Seattle Police Chief John Diaz announced his retirement on Monday, April 8, 2013 at City Hall in Seattle.
Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Rich O'Neill, president of Seattle's police labor union, speaks...

Seattle Police Chief John Diaz speaks in front of Thomas Perez, the Justice Department's chief civil rights enforcer, as the City of Seattle and U.S. Department of Justice hold a joint briefing to announce an agreement on police reforms on Friday, July 27, 2012. Officials agreed to an independent monitor and court oversight of the city's police department as part of the agreement.

A sign flaps in the wind as two protesters affix it to bike racks outside Seattle Central Community College on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. The protesters, who marched to the Seattle Police Department's East Precinct, called for the resignation of Chief John Diaz.

Photo: LINDSEY WASSON

A sign flaps in the wind as two protesters affix it to bike racks...

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and Police Chief John Diaz speak to reporters after announcing that Officer Richard Francis Nelson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the veteran officer was arrested for mishandling drug evidence on Thursday, January 5, 2011.

Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and Police Chief John Diaz speak to...

Federico Martinez, left, and Juan Jose Bocanegra interrupt a meeting with a banner calling for Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, far right, to resign during a panel discussion on police accountability on Thursday, February 3, 2011 at Seattle City Hall. Recent controversial police incidents prompted the at times rowdy forum.

After three decades with the department, Seattle Police Chief John Diaz announced his retirement Monday as Mayor Mike McGinn voiced his support for the embattled chief.

Diaz, a 33-year veteran of the Police Department, made the announcement at a City Hall news conference. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn appeared with him, as did Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel, who will serve as interim chief.

Tightly composed and soft-spoken from the podium, Diaz was effusive Monday in his praise of the department, its officers and McGinn. Diaz said the time had come for others to move the department forward, and said he is satisfied with planned reforms forced on the Police Department following a critical Justice Department.

"Is there ever a perfect time? No. But it was time for me to go,” Diaz said, flanked by McGinn. "I leave here pretty proud of the job I have done."

McGinn, who appointed Diaz the city's permanent police chief in August 2010, described Diaz’s tenure as “a challenging and turbulent time” while crediting Diaz for being the first Seattle police chief to fire an officer for dishonesty. The mayor said the decision to retire was Diaz's.

"He had dedicated his life to public service," McGinn said. "I am deeply, deeply grateful to Chief Diaz for his service to this community."

The mayor went on to offer a little insight into Diaz, a private man plainly uneasy making public appearances.

Describing the outgoing chief as “kind of a liberal,” McGinn – a former Sierra Club leader perhaps most often seen in public riding a bicycle – said Diaz used his position to see that arrestees would not face deportation. McGinn also said Diaz often loaned him books he believed would help the mayor understand the tasks at hand. In example, the mayor said, Diaz wanted to make “Community: The Structure of Belonging” – a book author Peter Block describes as offering “an alternative to the patriarchal beliefs that dominate our culture” – required reading for SPD candidates for sergeant.

Diaz has held the top spot at SPD since March 2009, when he was appointed interim chief to replace the departing Gil Kerlikowske. Diaz was the first Seattle police employee appointed to chief since 1974; he was also the department’s first Latino chief.

A gang unit commander during the 1990s, Diaz headed the department's efforts in 2008 and 2009 under the mayor's youth violence initiative to prevent teen shootings. The plan outlined more policing, school resource officers and intervention.

In March 2009, former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels named Diaz as interim successor to Kerlikowske, who had become director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Diaz was appointed chief by McGinn the following year following a national search.

"This is a profession I truly believe in," Diaz, listing the successes of his department and thanking the rank and file.

"I feel incredibly lucky to be able to be part of this department for 33 years."

Calls for Diaz’s resignation came before he was even selected as Kerlikowske’s permanent replacement, when a gang unit detective was caught on tape threatening to beat the “piss” out of Latino man. That incident and others – notably the shooting of woodcarver John T. Williams by a Seattle officer – helped precipitate a civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice. Federal investigators ultimately found a Seattle police were engaged in a “pattern of excessive force.”

Since then, the city has been forced into an oversight agreement currently challenged by the Seattle Police Guild and the union representing police management. Diaz said he held off retiring until the agreement appeared to be on a solid footing.

Speaking following Monday’s announcement, public defender Lisa Daugaard was largely complimentary of Diaz and Pugel.

Daugaard, an attorney with the Defender Association and supervisor of the organization’s Racial Disparity Project, credited Diaz for disciplining officers for transgressions that previous administrations ignored. She also said Pugel, with Diaz’s support, pushed forward an innovative program that enables officers to deliver low-level offenders to social services instead of jail.

That pilot program – Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion – drew wide support from community leaders in Belltown and Skyway, the two areas where it has been implemented thus far. Several of the city’s most aggressive police units were charged with implementing it in Belltown, Daugaard said, and have done so successfully. Daugaard said she believes the department is seriously committed to the program and other innovative efforts toward preventing crimes by helping those who might commit them.

Whatever successes Diaz achieved, though, had to be balanced against longstanding problems within the department, Daugaard said. Those issues made any positive gains difficult to discern.

“The steps forward in the past four years are adding up to less than the sum of their parts,” Daugaard said.

Among those who previously called for Diaz to be removed as chief was James Bible, president of the Seattle King County NAACP. Bible suggested Diaz’s departure and the Justice Department-mandated oversight present an opportunity to correct the department’s “culture of indifference” to police abuses.

“We’re in a critical place in terms of institutional change,” Bible said. He said he is concerned the department will continue to create “an illusion of change instead of actual change.”

Among the tasks ahead for the department leaders will be brokering a new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Officers have been working without a contract for more than two years, and the reforms pushed through following the Department of Justice investigation have complicated negotiations.

The Guild has sued the city, claiming the settlement city leaders struck with the Department of Justice calls for changes that should be bargained with the union. That lawsuit is ongoing in federal court.

Guild President Sgt. Rich O’Neill said Monday that the union’s lawsuit had been wrongly characterized as an effort to stop reforms. Describing the settlement as “very good … given the circumstances,” O’Neill asserted the city’s agreement with the Department of Justice violates its contract with its police officers.

Key to the settlement are new procedures through which officers could be disciplined or fired. Bible faulted the city and department leaders for “a consistent policy of negotiating away (their) ability to discipline officers” while bargaining with the Guild.

With Pugel expected to take over leadership of the department in coming weeks, McGinn said the city will start its search for a permanent replacement. McGinn estimated the search would take months, and would not be concluded before the November mayoral election.

Pugel, the longtime commander of the department’s Investigations Bureau, began his career with SPD in 1983 and has served in a variety of capacities. O’Neill credited Pugel for his hands-on leadership style and noted that he often turns up at crime scenes begin investigated by his detectives.

Speaking Monday, Pugel declined to say whether he will put himself forward for Diaz’s position.